Blog Archives

The Chicago Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Modern European and Russian History Workshop, the History Department, and the France Chicago Center

are pleased to present:

Symposium on Modern Jewish and Israeli History

In Search of Cosmopolitan Consumption:

Jews, Department Stores and Modern Mass Consumption in Germany

Paul Lerner

History, University of Southern California

Discussant: Tara Zahra, History, University of Chicago

May 19, 4:30 pm

Social Science Research Building, Rm. 224

John Hope Franklin Room

1126 E. 59th St.

Paul Lerner, Associate Professor of History at USC, specializes in the history of the human sciences,Jewish history and the history and theory of consumer culture in Germany and Central Europe. He is the author of “Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890-1930 (Cornell, 2003) and co-editor of “Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry and Trauma in the Modern Age” (Cambridge, 2001) and “Jewish Masculinities: German Jews, Gender and History” (Indiana, forthcoming 2012). He is currently writing a book entitled “Consuming Encounters: Jews, Department Stores and Early Mass Consumption in Germany.”

Please contact Christina Heisser at cheisser@uchicago.edu for a copy of the paper if you plan to attend. The symposium is in a workshop format, and assumes all participants have read the paper in advance.

The Symposium is made possible through the Harriet and Ulrich Meyer Fund and the Aronberg Fund of the Chicago Center for Jewish Studies with additional support from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Modern European and Russian History Workshop, the History Department, and the France Chicago Center.

This event is free and open to the public. Contact Christina Heisser at 773-702-7108 orcheisser@uchicago.edu with questions or to request a disability accommodation.

Clemens C.J. Roothaan was born in 1918 in Nijmegen, Holland. As part of a non Jewish Dutch Resistance group, during World War II he was detained as a prisoner of war camp and then sent for a year to a concentration camp in Vught (Holland) and then sent to Sachsenhausen, outside of Berlin. As the allies approached and the camp was shut down, Clemens was sent on a death march with the other inmates.

Clemens C.J. Roothaan is the Louis Block Professor Emeritus of Physics and Chemistry at theUniversity of Chicago and creator of the Roothaan Equations.

Join the Warsaw Committee of Chicago Sister Cities International for the Spotlight on Poland’s Jewish Revival, a panel presentation and public discussion about the remarkable revitalization of Jewish life and culture currently taking place in Poland, and its significance for Jewish and Polish communities in Poland and worldwide, as well as for Jewish-Polish relations. Following the panel presentations, the audience will be invited to join us for discussion and refreshments.When: Thursday, May 12Where: Chicago Cultural Center – Sidney R. Yates Gallery
78 E. Washington StreetTime: 5:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. (Panel 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.)
Free and open to the public

Special Event! Yael Hersonski’s award-winning documentary interrogates a body of archival footage shot in the Warsaw ghetto in May 1942 under the Nazi propaganda machine. The film incorporates interviews with the cinematographer of the original footage, survivors’ responses, and reflections on the Nazi construction of images of Jewish life in the Ghetto. The special screening, in presence of director Yael Hersonski, is dedicated to the memory of Miriam Bratu Hansen. Free and open to the public, co-sponsored by The Chicago Center for Jewish Studies and The Human Rights Program (A roundtable discussion will take place at the Film Studies Center, Sat. April 30, 8:30pm.) 35mm

Friday, April 29: Workshop with Yael Hersonski

Location TBA

12:00 pm

Saturday, April 30: “The Silence of the Archive: Roundtable Discussion on A Film Unfinished”

These events are made possible by the Harriet and Ulrich Meyer Fund of the Chicago Center for Jewish Studies, and are presented in collaboration with the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, doc films, and the Human Rights Program.

The Drisha’s Arts Fellowship Program aims to revitalize the Jewish community by producing Jewishly knowledgeable artists. Women who are creative writers, visual artists, musicians, and performers are invited to apply. Drisha encourages the Arts Fellows to integrate their work with their Jewish learning and experience.

Arts Fellows who learn full time at Drisha receive a tuition waiver and may apply for a stipend. Arts Fellows who learn part time receive a tuition waiver and may apply for a financial award at the end of their year of learning.

Artists come from a range of diverse backgrounds in Jewish learning and have the opportunity to select a group of classes appropriate to their level. Some artists take skill-based classes in Biblical Hebrew and Bible in our Yesodot Skill-Building program. Those with a more extensive background in learning may join our Beit Midrash or Scholars Circle programs and study Talmud and halakha as well as Bible. Click here to learn more about these programs.

In addition to committing to a select group of regular Drisha classes, all of the arts fellows attend a dynamic text class once a week designed to enrich their work and deepen their relationship with the Torah. This class also gives fellows the opportunity to spend time in the beit midrash (library) doing research for independent projects. Open only to Arts Fellows, this class serves to foster a strong bond among them.

Arts fellows meet at “salons” every week to share and discuss their work. Arts Fellows also present their work to the Drisha community throughout the year, and perform, read, or showcase their work at an event that takes place in June. Collaborations are encouraged.

“This year it dawned on me that until I arrived at Drisha I had never found this type of community in all of my writing or Jewish experiences. I was always the lone writer or the lone Jew depending on which group I found myself in. Being at Drisha has strengthened my passion for integrating who I am as a Jew into my writing. Drisha has given me a rich context that inspires and informs my poetry. I’m very grateful to be part of this kind of program where we are encouraged to share our passions, fears, processes, and help each other as we learn and grow as Jews and as artists. As a writer, I’m very excited to be learning Biblical Hebrew which allows me, finally, to engage in texts that I would have otherwise thought were closed to me.”

For more information about applying to or supporting the program, please contact Jaime Wynn, Arts Fellowship Coordinator.

The Jewish-Muslim Initiative,
International Studies Program, and
the Institute for the Humanities
at the University of Illinois at Chicago
present

Changing Roles?
Women in Traditional Jewish and Muslim Communities

Monday, February 7, 2011
Additional details will be announced.

The traditional religious legal systems in both Judaism and Islam (halacha and sharia) been widely challenged, in recent years, by charges that they are oppressive or demeaning to women. Women committed both to a traditional form of Judaism or Islam and to the gender equality that marks the modern world have responded to this charge in a variety of ways – some of which have begun to change their communities quite radically. This conference will explore changing roles of women in prayer, study, communal leadership and other aspects of traditional Muslim and Jewish life.

Memorial Program Commemorating the 69th Anniversary of Babiy Yar, September 29

SKOKIE VALLEY AGUDATH JACOB SYNAGOGUE,

8825 EAST PRAIRIE RD, SKOKIE, IL 60076

1:00 P.M. – 3:00 P.M.

If you would like to have a sit in one of the busses that will be waiting in 10 designated stops in Chicago and suburbs, please contact Alla Spector at 224-625-2703 or Irina Polishchuk

at 847-483-9197 for more information.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS PROGRAM WILL BE IN RUSSIAN, BUT EVERYONE IS INVITED TO PARTICIPATE.

Holocaust Community Services is a program of *Jewish Child and Family Services,
*CJE SeniorLife, *HIAS Chicago and Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago,
supported by grants from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc,
the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation and the Humanitarian Aid Foundation

*Partners in serving the community, receiving support from the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation